Now that Alberta’s NDP government has unleashed the old chestnut of a guaranteed annual income as the solution to the socialist dream of eradicating poverty through redistribution of income, it may be worthwhile taking a little trip down history lane. Andrew Coyne has provided some of this history in North America, but no recent commentator has noted that the concept of a guaranteed annual income is much older than Canada.

Since the sixties, numerous social scientists have penned a variety of treatises on the impact of employment insurance on work motivation. One frequently cited example is Atlantic Canada where observers have noted the region has sometimes experienced the paradox of both high unemployment rates and labour shortages due to the unanticipated effects of generous seasonal Employment Insurance benefits. As usual in this clash of empiricism and political expedience there have been no definitive conclusions. And so it may remain that there will continue to be near total absence of informed policy analysis in the linkage of money and human motivation at the lower end of the economic continuum. While most of this current discussion has been focused on programs such as employment insurance and the temporary worker program, the guaranteed annual income is about to be lumped into the mix of contrasting opinions.

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Pierre Trudeau’s government experiment in a guaranteed annual income in Dauphin, Manitoba and similar experiments in the United States were undertaken many years ago, but these experiments were too short-term to offer many insights on human motivation and economic dependency. Furthermore, there was no sustained attempt to analyze the findings from these social experiments. Fortunately, an 18th century English legislative initiative provides a clearly defined analysis on the impact of long-term guaranteed financial support affecting both human motivation and labour market mobility. While governments and laws may come and go, human motivation remains similar across generations. Consistent with the view that there is very little new under the sun, social support legislation called the Speenhamland Law was initiated in England 1795-1834. The impact of this policy was analyzed by the noted social historian, Karl Polanyi in his book The Great Transformation.

The era in which Speenhamland was initiated comprised the most critical period leading up to the industrial revolution when people were needed to run the growing factories in the urban centers. At that time, however, England was still an agrarian society reliant upon a rural work force to support its agricultural base. Speenhamland provided a basic wage support linked to the price of corn (similar to the current Consumer Price Index) to people living in the rural areas of England “so that no man need fear to starve and that the parish would keep him and his family however little he earned.” In its time, Speenhamland was the equivalent to a guaranteed annual income. The effect of Speenhamland was to greatly increase the level of rural pauperism, or poverty as it would be currently named, pegged to the lowest possible standard of living that could be sustained with the wage subsidy provided to the rural inhabitants.

With the financial support of Speenhamland wage subsidies the population drifted down to a miserable level of rural subsistence but with sufficient money to avoid moving to the available better paying jobs in the cities. Furthermore, rural wage subsidies discouraged rural employers from paying decent wages since their employees were already receiving financial support from the government. The purpose of Speenhamland was to support the agriculture industry dominated by the landed gentry who required low cost labour to sustain their farming enterprises as the source of their wealth.

The Speenhamland program was sufficiently effective in constricting labour mobility as to almost derail the industrial revolution before it had a chance to change the world. Starved of labour to run the factories, it was only the shift of legislative power to the growing population of the cities that made it possible to repeal Speenhamland in 1834. With the elimination of the wage subsidy, people were forced to seek jobs in the growing industries of the cities rather than continue to live in rural poverty. This transformation in socio-economic policy facilitated the growth in labour mobility critical to the creation of the industrial society we now enjoy.

While Speenhamland took place 181 years ago, it demonstrates the impact of legislation enabling a population to reduce its standard of living below that which is consistent with an affluent, productive society.

Based on past experience, the long term impact of a guaranteed minimum income is very likely to discourage people from seeking more productive employment in other more economically vibrant areas. The negative impact of generous seasonal employment insurance benefits is well known and documented by labour market specialists, but their findings are generally viewed as politically unacceptable at the regional level where these benefits are concentrated. More recently, the attractiveness of the temporary worker program for employers who are unable to hire Canadian workers at current wage levels is an extension of the same phenomenon.

Sadly, when policy analysis conflicts with political opportunity, the winner in the debate rarely favors the former. The redistribution of wealth through a guaranteed annual income will inevitably ripple down to a lower labour force participation rate in any region where the program remains in force for an extended period of time. Alberta, if it opts for such a minimum, would have the temporary worker program to take up the slack, assuming that the Alberta government can accommodate the influx of new immigrants seeking to take advantage of their largesse. On the other hand, there may be a bloom of creativity among the vast number of writers and other artists who are currently struggling to make ends meet in the conventional economy. A guaranteed annual income will certainly be welcome in these quarters. And that may not be a bad thing.

Raymond Foote Ph.D is a former university professor and retired auditor with the federal government.

If one more person warns us that Canada is being secretly gulled into a long, open-ended war of attrition in the Middle East, I think my head will explode.

This clandestine plot to manoeuvre unsuspecting Canadians into a surprise war is being concocted so deep under the radar, behind closed doors in hush-hush conversations between unidentified conspirators, that it’s been all over the front pages for months now.

Ottawa has been talking about it constantly. Both opposition leaders are on their legs daily, hurling oaths of outrage about being kept in the dark. Pundits are beside themselves. Why, they want to know, will the prime minister not come clean about his secret plan, the one everyone knows about?

Here’s the secret: All semblance of civilized order has collapsed across a huge swath of the Middle East. The government of Syria, due to a civil war now in its fourth year, has lost control of large parts of the country. The vacuum this created has allowed the rise of an organization of extremist religious zealots of a particularly brutal nature, which beheads opponents, treats women as sex slaves and enforces a fundamentalist tyranny that is too barbaric to qualify even as medieval. A bitter rivalry between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq has enabled them to gain much ground there as well.

Rather than stay put, the extremists have vowed to bring their bloodlust to the West, mentioning Canada in particular. A number of Canadian youths have already been recruited to their cause and declared every desire of exporting terror to Canadian soil. They’re just a plane ride from making the attempt to do so.

The U.S., reluctantly and far too late, has finally stirred itself into organizing an international force to slow the jihadis’ advance and bottle them up in Syria and Iraq. President Barack Obama – a great hero of “progressives”, liberals and others of the left and centre – has asked Canada for help. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is mulling how far to go in complying.

So there’s the big secret. Ottawa wants to help. Mr. Harper feels the cause is “noble”, but has personally telephoned the families of enough war casualties that he isn’t eager to risk more Canadian lives. It’s believed the U.S. request includes fighter planes, which would make it a combat mission, though one with limited risk. Mr. Harper has pledged repeatedly, as has Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, that any decision will be brought before Parliament for a debate and a vote.

Doesn’t seem that difficult to grasp, but you wouldn’t know it from the posturing. The official NDP position, repeated any time a microphone looms into view, is that the Prime Minister is “rushing” Canadians into a war. At the same time, they say he’s been slow to provide details of his decision. So he’s been rushing slowly towards a decision. The NDP, along with the Liberals, demand the decision be put to a vote, a condition Mr. Harper and Mr. Baird have met and wed themselves to. Still, they keep demanding it, as if it’s in question.

We’re told, the battle against the self-declared Islamic State will be long, ugly and open ended. Which was the last war that wasn’t open-ended?

The Liberals have decried the fact the Prime Minister hasn’t shared the details of his deliberations with Canadians, ignoring the fact (as Andrew Coyne noted today) that Jean Chretien committed Canadians troops to Afghanistan, and for a time Iraq, without once bothering himself to include Parliament. Mr. Mulcair is already referring snidely to “the prime minister’s war in Iraq,” as if Mr. Harper started it rather than simply responding to the request of a president whose party both the Liberals and NDP strive to emulate. Mr. Mulcair wants to know exactly how long the war will last, as if there’s a War Guide somewhere that divides it into neat 20-minute periods, like a hockey game.

Worst of all, we’re told, the battle against the self-declared Islamic State will be long, ugly and open ended. Which was the last war that wasn’t open-ended? When the Confederates fired the first shell at Fort Sumter in 1861, had they been pre-warned to have a delegation ready to surrender at Appomattox four years later? Did Gen. Lee already have it pencilled in in his date book? Canada’s opposition parties are simultaneously upset that the government committed 69 special forces to the mission – “rushing” Canada to the front – and that fewer than half of them have arrived with the 30-day mandate almost expired. Can’t they hurry up and do less? Worse, the mandate may be extended, which immediately turns the situation into a quagmire, a new Vietnam, a dark hole from which there is no escape.

Except that the government can escape whenever it wants. Troops can be recalled. Mr. Chretien, as Coyne points out, promised 800 soldiers for Iraq, then changed his mind. The decision will be made by public opinion, and the limited capacities of Canada’s military. If Mr. Mulcair and Mr. Trudeau believe the Prime Minister has no ability to direct the country’s armed forces, that he or she becomes a helpless observer once the initial deployment is made, they should probably be seeking another job.

Mr. Trudeau thinks Canada should avoid a combat mission, except maybe it should send jet fighters, except maybe it should think about it first. Mr. Mulcair agrees Canada should be doing something about ISIS, but we shouldn’t race “headlong” into a military mission. He wants to know the details of the Prime Minister’s thinking, so he can attack the decision before it’s made. He also wants to know why Mr. Harper is taking his time, why he’s being so careful about the options. He wants Ottawa to make a quick decision, but slow down about deciding. And he wants it done in public, so all the secrecy will end. The secrecy that we’ve all been reading about. Every day. All over the place.

If this is a covert war, cloaked in conspiracy, it must be the best-known secret in history.

In a recent column that appeared in the National Post, Andrew Coyne wrote an impassioned defence of the Supreme Court. The column attributed Tory whining about judicial power to “the generally incoherent state of conservatism in this country.”

To the contrary, opposition to overreaching by the Supreme Court is a proper stance not only for conservatives, but for any movement dedicated to the health of Canadian democracy.

The choice of quotes from the Tory caucus contained in the column — e.g., backbench Ontario MP Larry Miller complains the Court is “taking rights away from the majority to protect the minority” — provides target practice for a seasoned debater such as Mr. Coyne. But if he hopes to convince thoughtful defenders of parliamentary sovereignty, he’ll have to do more than fight a few straw men.

“All laws, not just constitutions or charters of rights, constrain government discretion,” Mr. Coyne instructs. “It’s always been true in this country that any law found inconsistent with the constitution was declared to be of no force or effect. Who decided such things? The courts: the Supreme Court, and before them, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.”

No one disputes that the Supreme Court existed before 1982. The difference, however, has been the grounds cited to invalidate statutes. Ruling that a provincial, but not the federal, legislature may pass a law on a particular subject (which was the sort of issue that historically has been well within a court’s jurisdiction) is immensely different from the far more recent practice of declaring that neither class of legislature may pass a law that bans, permits or regulates this or that practice (gay marriage, abortion, capital punishment, prostitution, take your pick).

Conservatives tend to regard “the idea of codifying rights … as a vaguely Gallic plot,” Mr. Coyne argues, while “perhaps forgetting Canada’s original Bill of Rights, the handiwork of a certain John George Diefenbaker.”

But Diefenbaker’s bill was a statutory document to inform future parliamentary actions — a statement of principles, if you like. Under the Canadian Bill of Rights, it was Parliament’s job to consider and interpret declared rights against proposed legislation — the opposite of today’s structure, whereby such responsibility falls to the judiciary.

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Mr. Coyne claims that the Court’s power is kosher because Parliament once consented to it. “Who do they think passed the Charter?” he asks. But what matters here is proportion: In theory, Parliament could consent to autocratic rule, or to an abolition of the franchise, yet no one would say that either was democratic. So it’s not enough to say that a democratic process involving legislators created the Charter; one has to show that it was justified in doing so.

In any case, the Court arguably has surpassed the powers originally intended for it. Several testimonies adduced by Professor Andrew Petter (formerly the Attorney General of B.C., and currently the President of Simon Fraser University) in his 1986 work The Politics of the Charter suggest, at the very least, that the framers intended due process to be interpreted procedurally, not substantively. How many judicial interventions in the past three decades could have been prevented if these wishes had been honoured?

Parliament is better suited to appreciating the rights-related as well as the rights-unrelated aspects of contentious values, and constructing laws accordingly

Mr. Coyne underplays the claim that judges err, by pointing out that politicians do so, too. But politicians are at least subject to regular, fair elections, which can take power away from their parties and remove them individually. No parallel process exists for judges, and Supreme Court nominees do not have to be confirmed by a representative body, only appointed by the executive.

The argument against Charter-style judicial review is twofold.

First, the Court’s legalistic method is unsuited to issues falling outside the realm of jurisprudence. There is no legal doctrine that can determine whether a man can marry another man, whether a fetus is a human being, whether the state can prohibit private health care, whether prostitutes bear culpability for their actions, or whether private property and liberty of contract are absolute rights. Parliament is better suited to appreciating the rights-related as well as the rights-unrelated aspects of contentious values, and constructing laws accordingly.

By ceding authority of interpretation to the courts alone, we simultaneously remove an important avenue of public debate

Second, courts not only enforce constitutional rights; they also interpret them, despite reasonable disagreement about their meaning and scope. By ceding authority of interpretation to the courts alone, we simultaneously remove an important avenue of public debate while precluding recourse for those who object to unjust rulings.

Judicial review for rights has become a mainstay of Canadian law, so barring some miraculous moment, everyone will indeed have to, as Mr. Coyne says, “come to terms” with it. But this doesn’t change how misguided the project was in the first place.

“Tip big, boys. Tip big because you get good service.” — Cate Blanchett, in Blue Jasmine

Jasmine’s aphorism — delivered in Woody Allen’s 2013 movie, hilariously, to the protagonist’s two uncomprehending child nephews — reflects everything we hate about tipping. Seen in its worst light, the practice is a demeaning ritual whereby the rich and unctuous flaunt their power over the working classes. That extra fiver gets you a second coat of wax on your car, an extra shot of hard stuff in your cocktail. It’s easy to see why critics such as Andrew Coyne (whose anti-tipping manifesto appeared in these pages on Tuesday) denounce tipping as an obsolete vestige of Wodehouse-era “cap-doffing class obeisance.”

“The motives [tipping] engages are invariably base,” Coyne argues. “The tipper may believe it will impress his date, or at least avoid her disdain. Or else it is dispensed in hopes of special treatment, as with the note you might pass the doorman to let you skip the lineup at a club.”

But Coyne is wrong. Or at least outdated. When I was a child in the 1970s, people still paid their restaurant bills with big wads of cash, and tipping truly could be a gaudy, competitive affair. But in the 21st century, bills are paid with credit cards, and no one except your server can tell whether you’re giving 10% or 25%. For my cringingly class-conscious generation, tipping represents a ritualized expression not of vanity, but of gratitude.

Or, sometimes, straightforward recompense.

On Wednesday, I was taken out for breakfast at a fancy downtown Toronto hotel — the sort of place where the gluten-free toast costs $6. After my meal, I was late for work, so I got into the first taxi lined up outside the hotel, even though the National Post offices were just a kilometer away. I could see the disappointment etched on my driver’s face when I announced my destination. Taxis often wait in queue for a long time to get a hotel fare — in large part because a high proportion of passengers are bound for the airport. Instead, this guy had idled 20 minutes for a mere 10$.

What’s worse, I spent the 10-minute traffic-clogged ride on the phone, doing a short radio interview. Which meant I was talking in that loud, arrogant voice that sounds appropriate on broadcast media, but comes off as obnoxious when emitted by some cell-phone jackass in the back of a cab.

When I hung up, I didn’t just apologize; I gave the guy a fat tip. Blue Jasmine fat. It wasn’t for “special treatment” or “good service” — because I already was at my destination. I had no date to impress. And I certainly wasn’t looking for social validation: The security architecture of a modern taxi cab means you never really make eye contact with your driver anyway. I anted up to make amends for the short, crappy trip that we’d shared together. The guy didn’t have to doff his cap, because he knew we were even.

Andrew Coyne is a numbers guy who likes to hold people to account for the social cost of their actions. (Witness his Thursday column on toll booths, in which he urged drivers to “pay the real costs of using the roads.”) But there can never be any hard-and-fast jackass surcharge, listed on the rate card affixed to the interior of every taxi cab. It’s the sort of thing that must be left to a well-intentioned passenger’s discretion, on a jackass-by-jackass basis. Without the institution of tipping, making amends for social lapses endured in close confines becomes impossible.

Other examples abound. The waitress who silently fills my coffee cup at breakfast, and lets me sit there at a good table for hours writing my columns in cranky silence. And her friend who works the weekend shift, and gets stuck with the mess my children leave after Sunday brunch. Or the middle-aged Toronto cabbie from Syria who, upon my repeated encouragement, spent a 30-minute drive to the airport telling me fascinating stories about growing up Catholic in Damascus. Why do we tip? Because there is no Toronto Licensing Commission-prescribed rate for Middle Eastern anecdotes.

You’d also expect a free-market type such as Coyne to appreciate the “market signalling” function of tipping. As a teenager in the 1980s, one of my first jobs was delivering pizzas for what was then Domino’s Pizza’s first Montreal location, on Saint Jacques Street. As the dinner rush wound down at 9pm or so, we would all sit around and compare tip totals — the least successful among us ever-eager to learn best practices from his peers.

I particularly remember one hapless, mulletted specimen — let’s call him “Bill” — who would end each day with half of what the others earned. He seemed genuinely confused by this — and so one day I asked him, in the most polite way I could, if he thought it might have anything to do with the fact that he smelled like an ashtray (he actually would smoke as he brought the pizza to the door), and looked like a roadie for a downmarket heavy-metal band (his trademark belt-buckle was a massive thing that covered most of his mid-section, and featured a metal embossment of what looked like a skull eating a snake eating another skull).

Far from being offended, Bill became deeply contemplative. He didn’t quit smoking or change his haircut (his girlfriend liked it). But the urge to please customers and make better tips did induce him to lose the belt buckle. He became a less creepy (and presumably wealthier) person, all thanks to Adam Smith’s invisible hand unmasking his crotch.

To a certain kind of Spock-like mind, the arbitrary, discretionary nature of tipping is offensive. Why not just set every price in pen and ink, Coyne asks, and be done with it?

What he neglects is that, from a sociological point of view, tipping has civic value precisely because it is discretionary. The fact that waiters and taxi drivers can rely on me, and everyone reading this column, to ante up a reasonable tip — even though we are under no legal obligation to do so — is both a symptom and source of the high levels of social trust that exist in successful societies.

Yes, someone who doesn’t tip will face social discomfort, but the very fact that we fear such discomfort reflects the fact that we see ourselves as social creatures, with obligations even to those anonymous people whom we might never see again in our life after we have paid for our coffee or exited their cab.

Tip big, boys. Even if you don’t get better service, it’s still the right thing to do.

“This is a budget any Liberal finance minister could have brought down. Could and, in parts, did,” he pronounced cruelly if accurately.

It didn’t cut spending, it raised it. It played silly games, putting off spending until future years so it could pretend it wasn’t really spending. It mimicked smarmy Liberal giveaways: tax credits to help little kids buy new shin pads, to help tradesmen buy new hammers, to help long-haul truckers carry the cost of sandwiches. It cut some taxes, but mostly the wrong ones: fulfilling a campaign pledge to reduce the GST by two points cost $10 billion in lost revenue. Tack that back on and Mr. Flaherty could today be revelling in a juicy fat surplus.

What he didn’t do, as National Post columnist Lorne Gunter noted, was what Tories are supposed to do: take an axe to income taxes and leave more money in people’s pockets. And this when they had a $14 billion surplus, and expected another $12 billion the next year.

The Tories thought they had lots of time then. They’d just been elected after 14 long years. It would take time to remedy the damage of all that Liberal misrule.

But things don’t always work out as planned, and before he could start being a really Conservative finance minister, Mr. Flaherty got socked with the 2008 meltdown, which started in the U.S. and dragged half the world with it. There were no more surpluses. There was lots less revenue. Suddenly he had to spend, and he didn’t have the money, so he had to borrow — $162 billion in all. The annual budget became a yearly ordeal, as he was forced to stand in the Commons and pretend he really liked saving the country from the brink by piling up debt. He had to smile when he said it.

The first Flaherty budget included a promise to put $3-billion a year toward debt reduction, with any “unexpected surpluses” sent to the Canada Pension Plan.

Which is all prelude to suggesting that Mr. Flaherty, older, wiser and struggling under a persistent ailment, may finally be where he thought he’d be way back when. He revealed Tuesday that he’s got the deficit down to $2.9 billion, less than the amount set aside for emergencies, and which could easily turn into a surplus by the fall. Spending will barely budge. Program spending is actually down. Civil service pensioners will be whacked with demands to pay half the cost of their health plans, double what they pay now. And next year — barring the unforeseen — surpluses will return: $6.4-billion for the first (election) year, and $26 billion in the three years after that.

This time, he vows, it won’t be frittered away on minor atom shin pads.

“Let me be clear,” he said as he stood again in Parliament to reveal his work. “A return to surplus is not a licence to spend recklessly. What we will do – what we have always done – is stay the course. We will make sure Canada’s fiscal position remains strong enough to weather any future global economic storms. That starts with paying down the debt.”

Well, that remains to be seen. Stuff can happen. That first Flaherty budget included a promise to put $3-billion a year toward debt reduction, with any “unexpected surpluses” sent to the Canada Pension Plan. “Unexpected surpluses” … good one, eh? Mr. Flaherty is already committed to making good on earlier pledges, such as an income-splitting plan that has New Democrats spitting bullets before it’s even introduced.

JEAN LEVAC, , THE OTTAWA CITIZENLawrence Manor
69 Brucewood Dr. (Bathurst Street and Lawrence Avenue)
Asking price: $943,000
Sold for: $900,000
Taxes: $4,233(2013)
Bedrooms: 3
Bathrooms: 2
Time on the market: 13 days
Two-storey addition at back of house
A flagstone walkway leads to the front door of this unassuming brick home, which is on a private site that’s sure to impress, says listing agent Melissa Dreaddy.
The 58x120-foot lot has a private driveway, a detached 1.5-car garage and a deep backyard with interlocking brick patio space to relax on after a long day.
A large two-storey addition at the back of the home includes a master suite that has a six-piece ensuite bathroom, a dressing room and six double closets. A den could be converted into a fourth bedroom.
The main floor of the addition has a sun-filled eat-in kitchen that’s open to the family room. A walkout leads to the backyard. Ideal for entertaining, the living/dining room has two windows to keep the space bright.
The house is conveniently located close to the subway and Highway 401.
Listing Broker: David Eichorn Realty Ltd. (Melissa Dreaddy and Daniel Weisberg)

Mr. Flaherty’s boss may also have something to say between now and debt-repayment time. With an election due in October 2015 and Mr. Harper striving to win back some of the credibility lost to the Senate scandal, Mr. Flaherty may be pressed to fiddle with the purse strings once again in the general interest of the party.

It’s possible he won’t be around to deal with that danger. He’s been a finance minister, federal and provincial, for almost a decade. He could have left years ago and taken a fat job that would have left him far richer than he is. He has friends who think he’s done enough and needs to look after his health. He’s stubborn, but once the books are balanced he’ll have achieved what he set out to do and could, if he wanted, hand off with an honourable departure.

Andrew Coyne still isn’t wild about his budgeting — “It’s not a bad budget, overall, ” he says of the latest iteration, except it could have done great Tory things, if only Mr. Flaherty was willing. But you can’t have everything. Mr. Flaherty may be happy with his surplus. It’s a bauble few other countries can boast, it opens the door to all sorts of government initiatives down the road, and it was achieved in the face of serious headwinds.

So when Michael Chong tables a private members bill to decentralize power away from the Prime Minister’s Office, it’s impossible to doubt his sincerity. It’s a worthy cause led by a noble champion. Another champion of democratic reform, Andrew Coyne, has praised the Reform Act saying “Parliament will never be the same again”. Here’s Coyne’s summary of the bill (the full text of which can be read here):

1. A leadership review vote could be triggered at any time on the receipt of written notice bearing the signatures of at least 15% of the members of caucus. A majority of caucus, voting by secret ballot, would be sufficient to remove the leader.

2. It would similarly empower caucus to decide whether an MP should be permitted to sit amongst their number. A vote to expel (or to readmit) would be held under the same rules as a leadership review.

3. It would remove the current provision in the Elections Act requiring any candidate for election to have his nomination papers signed by the party leader. Instead, the required endorsement would come from a “nomination officer,” elected by the members of the riding association. There would be no leader’s veto.

Coyne points to Australia as the working example of MP-initiated leadership reviews, but it’s hard to think the ongoing feud between Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd was good for the Labour Party, or Australia. (Labor lost the recent election after Rudd and Gillard took turns ousting one another from the leadership)

The move would undoubtedly transfer more power to MPs, as would giving them the ability to kick one of their own out of caucus. But all that is being transferred are punitive powers – the opportunity to boot a leader, or a caucus member. This act would do nothing to give them a greater say in passing laws or having their opinions heard – it would merely create a group of restless MPs with no real power except the ability to turn on their leader and each other. Welcome to Survivor: Ottawa.

Removing the threat of expulsion by the leader might encourage MPs to speak their mind, but it’s important not to overstate the impact. The only two MPs booted from any caucus within the past 5 years – Peter Goldring and Helena Guergis – were forced out not because of policy differences, but because of scandal. Going back further, Bill Casey and Joe Comuzzi were removed after voting on principle, but it’s unclear if having MPs vote against their party on budgets would or should be tolerated. Garth Turner’s ouster was actually brought about by a vote by members of the Conservative Party’s Ontario caucus who felt he wasn’t enough of a team player, so I don’t buy that transferring the whip from the PMO to MPs would actually lead to more “mavericky” behaviour.

It’s possible MPs would be be able to leverage these punitive powers into real legislative power, but if the goal is to empower MPs in the House, committees, and the decision-making process, why not bring those changes about directly?

The part of this bill that has received the least attention, but is the most problematic is giving riding associations the ultimate say in candidate vetting, by having them elect a “Nomination Officer”. It’s unclear how exactly this would work, since all parties (almost always) hold nomination contests in unheld ridings and Green Light Committees vet candidates to make sure there aren’t crack videos of them floating around the Internet.

One assumes the Nomination Officer could deny an MP, or a candidate, the right to run for nomination, or could veto a candidate once nominated. This opens the possibility of an impasse if the Nomination Officer nixes a candidate who has been elected by the riding, or is at odds with a potential candidate and supports someone else. Paranoia already runs deep in local politics, and you can be sure MPs concerned about a challenge would do everything in their power to ensure a friendly face is elected as the riding’s Nomination Officer. That means local ridings would spend more time fighting each other rather than doing the types of things local ridings should be doing.

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The thing is, there’s an exceedingly simple solution to this – open nominations, in which all MPs must be re-nominated by members of the riding. This gives members a say without turning riding association board elections into Game of Thrones. Indeed, this is something Justin Trudeau has promised, so this change would either be irrelevant to Liberal nominations, or would needlessly complicate them.

Which begs the question of why Parliament needs to police political parties at all. For good reason, Parliament doesn’t set the cut-off dates, eligibility, or rules for nominations. They don’t tell parties how often to conduct leadership reviews. The parties themselves decide if they want delegated conventions, one-member-one-vote races, or a primary-style supporter system.

So although Chong’s bill may look like a step forward for democracy, its impact would be largely negligible and, in some instances, it may do more harm than good.

Political pundits, such as Andrew Coyne, have labelled Monday’s by-elections as a “spanking” for the Conservatives. On the one hand we have a tired, morally bankrupt Conservative government (a “gang of thugs,” according to Mr. Coyne) mired in the Duffy-Wright Affair. We have NDP’s Thomas Mulcair supposedly wiping the floor of the House of Commons with Stephen Harper with his razor-sharp, prosecutor-type questions on the Senate scandal. And the Liberals, with Justin Trudeau, have a shiny new leader with name recognition and a belief that under his leadership they are now the party of hope in Canada.

Yet when everything is said and done, there was no uprising by Canadians against the “Conservative thugs” in Ottawa on Monday. As the governing party, the Conservatives still managed to win the two seats that they held previously and which matter most.

The pundits (not to mention the pollsters) were and are mistaken about the meaning of these byelections. And pundits’ interpretation of the results carries about as much meaning as the poll results did.

Curt Shalapata, Oshawa, Ont.

Andrew Coyne definitely is “spinning it” by saying the Conservatives were spanked in byelections. They retained their two seats in Manitoba, in spite of the Liberal candidate in Brandon/Souris having past conservative ties. As for Toronto Centre and Bourassa, there are not too safer Liberal seats in Canada.

Larry Comeau, Ottawa.

‘Mulcair doth protest too much’

With his interminable pursuit of the Prime Minister over the Senate fiasco, NDP leader Mulcair has lost sight of the fact that there are numerous other government activities that it is his responsibility to oppose with equal vigour. Does he not realize that unless the RCMP reveals conflicting evidence, Stephen Harper will never change his responses to his rather juvenile “Yes/No” questions? Mr. Mulcair’s foolish obsession over a single issue has allowed our astute Prime Minister to introduce government policies with minimal debate. Mr. Mulcair’s folly is no match for Mr. Harper’s fortress.

John Hardie, Kanata, Ont.

Since when do the words of an elected politician belong to a party and not to all Canadians? After all, Canadians say “fuddle duddle,” “just watch me” or “a proof is a proof” without paying royalties to the liberal party. Methinks Mr. Mulcair doth protest too much. Sorry, Bard.

T. Needer, Thornhill, Ont.

The post-byelection squabbling over Jack Layton’s dying words of “hope” notwithstanding, there is scant reason for Stephen Harper’s re-election chances in 2015 to rely on the inconceivability of a merger of the left and centre.

A united Liberal/NDP Party would dominate Canadian politics in a country seemingly populated by a mass of people who cannot abide the prospect of a smaller and less interventionist federal government. Canada’s political landscape has been consistently defined by a voting public with an insatiable appetite for government services, viewing Ottawa as a benevolent force to redistribute wealth to all those who want equality of outcome, rather than equality of opportunity.

However strongly we may be inclined to dismiss Justin Trudeau and Thomas Mulcair individually as political liabilities, we’d do well to remind ourselves of what Greek poet Homer observed as a collective truth: “There is strength in the union even of very sorry men.”

E.W. Bopp, Tsawwassen, B.C.

Public Broadcasting Benefits All

With the impending loss of Hockey Night in Canada, people are once again debating the future of the CBC. Again, we are hearing that perhaps it would be more efficient to let the private market figure it all out and eliminate the subsidy for our national broadcaster. However, when you consider that the CBC receives only $33 per Canadian to provide programming — drastically lower than the $81 per capita that the average European public broadcaster receives — can we really expect our public broadcaster to be able to provide quality programming?

The prime role of a public broadcaster is not to entertain or make money. Rather, it should actively work in the best interests of the Canadian citizenry, a role that it can fulfill side-by-side with the best of private media in this country. With proper funding from the federal government, the CBC has the ability to work in the best interests of all Canadians. With the number of private media reporters declining and newsrooms shrinking nationwide, Canadians, now more than ever, need a viable and well-funded CBC.

Zach Fleisher, Winnipeg.

On-ice gladiators

The NHL brass, as well as Don Cherry (Canada’s most avid proponent of fighting on ice) and the CBC (responsible for paying Cherry megabucks to promote this savagery) are all in denial over the horrific consequences of this barbaric practice. Hockey fans apparently demand to see blood on the ice, and are willing to pay big money to watch players get their skulls beat in. It is simply a modern version of Romans salivating over feeding the early Christians to the lions. Just like the “bread and circuses” mentality of ancient Rome, when the masses call for blood, the hockey promoters must deliver. Brain-bashing fills the hockey palaces and the NHL coffers.

The injured players behind the class action lawsuit who once participated in this so-called “manly” sport should expand their net, and sue more than the NHL brass.

Jim McDonald, Dundas, Ont.

Suicide is painless

Barbara Kay is behind the times when it comes to the drug now commonly being used for euthanasia. As the article about the doctor assisting the death of seniors on Washington’s Bainbridge Island notes, the procedure is being carried out using Pentobarbital, not lethal injection. Essentially, the high dosage of Pentobarbital quickly puts the recipient to sleep, and the heart stops soon after. It is painless.

Pentobarbital is also now being used in U.S. prisons on death row, replacing the three-drug concoction that had been used — often with disastrous results. So if the time has come to end your life in order to relieve unrelenting pain, whether that pain be physical or physiological, the “optics” of using Pentobarbital look pretty good to me.

George Parker, Cobourg, Ont.

We cannot ignore some the frightening ramifications in which this Bill-52 may transfer along with it. If it comes to pass as a law, we would be opening doors to rooms which no one would feel comfortable entering. For instance, children and teens may want to terminate their lives because they feel too depressed or bullied. With this new legislation, the next time we see someone about to jump off a bridge, instead of helping him down, we may say something like: “Here sir, this pill is quicker and less painful.” On a side note, I find it ironic that the Quebec government, which is so keen on preserving their culture and language, is so lax when it comes to preserving the sanctity of human life.

Michael Stein, Montreal.

Alter the semantics

Perhaps we could alter the semantics about the death and dying debate, as that action may open alternative perspectives on the issue. Let’s hold off on terms such as “assisted suicide,” “euthanasia” and “slippery slope.” After all, whose life is it, anyway? How about: “death with dignity,” a “mortally wounded life,” a “compassionate end of life,” “ending a life of quiet desperation” or “ending a life of inordinate silent suffering.” To paraphrase Winston Churchill: “Many forms of medicine have been tried and, will be tried in this world of sin and woe.”

Dr. David Saul, Toronto.

Enough with the death and dying theme. There must be less depressing content available to encourage subscribers to read the National Post instead of encouraging them to compose their obituary.

Ray Foote, Navarre Beach, Fla.

Donate your organs

What an incredibly ignorant response to a very logical solution surrounding organ donation in this country. Efforts to educate people about organ donation and encourage conversations with loved ones to indicate their wishes are certainly positive steps, but these aren’t new. It’s easier than ever to register for organ donation online — yet the numbers continue to bear out apathy in this regard. Those opposed to potentially saving several lives — or a valuable function of human life like sight — and would instead prefer that their organs rot along with the rest of their useless body posthumously, should perhaps take the modicum of effort required to indicate such, prior to their own death. Barring that, I’d like to hear a cogent ethical argument why the default position shouldn’t always be to save as many lives as possible?

Doug Beck, Dundas, Ont.

Pass me a GM apple

Had the Arctic apple arisen by a natural mutation, or had it been produced by “conventional” breeding, it would have been found perfectly acceptable by to those who sound the alarm about genetically modified food. One drawback to “conventional” breeding, though, is that the gene you want carries along with it some 25,000 or more genes that you don’t want. It then is a very laborious, long-term and uncertain task to “breed out” those unwanted (and for the most part unknown) genes.

Genetic modification, on the other hand, allows the breeder to insert a particular gene or, as in this case, suppress the expression of an unwanted gene with almost absolute precision, with none of the unknown, unwanted baggage inherent in conventional breeding. Moreover, shutting down the oxidase enzyme responsible for browning in the Arctic apple has absolutely nothing to do with the health or nutrition of the resulting apple.

The unwritten rule in plant breeding is that it is the product that is important, not the process. Unfortunately, militant anti-GM alarmists have no understanding of plant breeding and have been grossly misinformed, if not outright lied to, about genetic modification by leaders in the movement, who continue to foist their agenda of fear on an uninformed and gullible public.

Texting is quiet

Letter-writer Heinz Klatt makes an excellent point regarding silence, and how it is endangered, now that airlines are thinking of lifting the long-time ban on making cellphone calls. A simple solution would be for airlines to allow texting only. This would satisfy both parties.

Jerome Henen, North Vancouver, B.C.

Dare from a reader accepted

I’m not a “real” Quebecer, but I am a “real” Canadian. And I worry about the normalization of garments, like the niqab, that loudly proclaim a woman’s inferiority. Chris Selley’s acceptance of the niqab, especially in an educational environment, make me wonder if he thinks tolerance includes tolerating intolerance and the subordination of women. As to why there appears to be little reaction in Quebec to the photo of the niqab wearing daycare workers, could it be that few have actually seen it? The rest of Canada hasn’t, at least, not National Post readers. We should all see it, as this, apparently, is not just the present, but the future. C’mon National Post. Let’s see what Chris Selley is talking about. Print the photo and let’s see what your readers think.

If you are interested in reading the latest in the Rob Ford saga, this entry is not for you. I will not say much about him, but will rather explore the way I have grappled with this debacle. There has been much buzz and chatter about Ford in the last two years. That has increased exponentially in the past three weeks. He has appeared in almost every major network in North America due to his misconduct. One thing is certain: Rob Ford is not perfect. He is far from it.

By Santiago Rodriguez, S.J., from the blog: Ibo et Non Redibo
For me, the lowest point in this fiasco is our attack on his human dignity. We have turned from mere spectators to active members in Ford’s downfall. Ford has not helped himself at all with all his shenanigans. When this mess started, we did not know how to respond to his misconduct, or as Andrew Coyne calls it, “Ford’s contempt for social norms.” Ford’s lack of constraint led to our own. One joke about his weight led to another about his drug use. We invaded his privacy, and harassed him until he felt threatened. We punched the man when he was down. Before we knew it, we started to act like bullies.

Right about now, some of you might be thinking: “Wait a minute, I am no bully. The guy deserves this. Haven’t you seen the way he acts? You don’t think the guy lacks character?” Well, yes. Ford lacks character and self-control. I have paid close attention to his actions. Sometimes, I paid attention too closely. Like many others, I watched the videos and followed the buzz online. While I felt disgusted with Ford’s behaviour, I ignored my own. I turned into a bully.

If you are interested in reading the latest in the Rob Ford saga, this entry is not for you. I will not say much about him, but will rather explore the way I have grappled with this debacle. There has been much buzz and chatter about Ford in the last two years. That has increased exponentially in the past three weeks. He has appeared in almost every major network in North America due to his misconduct. One thing is certain: Rob Ford is not perfect. He is far from it.

By Santiago Rodriguez, S.J., from the blog: Ibo et Non Redibo
For me, the lowest point in this fiasco is our attack on his human dignity. We have turned from mere spectators to active members in Ford’s downfall. Ford has not helped himself at all with all his shenanigans. When this mess started, we did not know how to respond to his misconduct, or as Andrew Coyne calls it, “Ford’s contempt for social norms.” Ford’s lack of constraint led to our own. One joke about his weight led to another about his drug use. We invaded his privacy, and harassed him until he felt threatened. We punched the man when he was down. Before we knew it, we started to act like bullies.

Right about now, some of you might be thinking: “Wait a minute, I am no bully. The guy deserves this. Haven’t you seen the way he acts? You don’t think the guy lacks character?” Well, yes. Ford lacks character and self-control. I have paid close attention to his actions. Sometimes, I paid attention too closely. Like many others, I watched the videos and followed the buzz online. While I felt disgusted with Ford’s behaviour, I ignored my own. I turned into a bully.

Andrew Coyne blames the “condescending populism” of modern conservatism for Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s election, then maligns the 384,000 Torontonians who supported him by portraying them as akin to Neanderthal automatons who blindly subscribe to a philosophy Mr. Coyne portrays as “aggressively dumb, harshly divisive … contempt for learning … disdain for fact” and so on. Mr. Coyne says they can try to hide now, “but they made this monster.”

Actually, he has it backwards. It wasn’t Mr. Ford’s well-known “populism” that assured his overwhelming victory. It was the “condescending elitism” of his left-wing predecessor David Miller and his enablers, their collective sense of overweening superiority, which allowed Mr. Ford to collect more direct votes than any politician in Canadian history; the same brand of pompous elitism that Mr. Coyne himself displays in his mean-spirited put-down of almost half of all Toronto voters.

Claire Hoy, Toronto.

Thank u, Andrew Coin four letting us ritewring stoopids no yoo are so much smarter then us and for lumping us all inn with Ford. Not.

Steve Weatherbe, Victoria.

The media circus surrounding Rob Ford has become downright vicious. Elsewhere in the world, the big news is civil war, terrorism, typhoons — here in Canada it is a mayor’s personal life. You would think that Rob Ford had wasted billions of taxpayer dollars, but that is the irony of the situation. The unsung big story is a media that increasingly conflates the news to make small stories big and big stories small, out of all proportion to their merit. And the next time one of your readers accidentally hits their thumb with a hammer and yells out something other than a politically correct, “Ouch,” he or she should check to make sure there is no one around to record their expletive deleted.

Aldo Dolcetti, Richmond Hill, Ont.

If Rob Ford cleans up his drug habit over the next year and re-enters the race for mayor, he has my vote. All I care about is fiscal responsibility. If my taxes don’t go up, the lights go and my trash is picked up, I’m happy. If the mayor does or doesn’t go to Gay Pride events is irrelevant. If he likes hookers, he’ll have to answer to his wife, not me.

Your Saturday comment pages were reasonably balanced. Andrew Coyne offers a sermon about everything we already know about Rob Ford while also reminding us of everything we hate about elitist liberal thinking. Chris Selley reminds us why so many voted for Ford and why many will continue to vote for whomever might protect us from this same liberal elitist thinking.

John C. Clarke, Guelph, Ont.

Uneasy about police investigation

I want to thank reporter Adrian Humphreys for making me feel a tad more sane when thinking there is a peculiar and discomforting odour to this police exposé. This “discomfort,” if I may call it that, is the feeling that that the way the Toronto Police Services carried out the investigation into Rob Ford and two small-scale marijuana dealers has been out of the ordinary, even for what we are witnessing. This unease is magnified by the thought, confirmed by this article, that this will be extremely costly to the taxpayer. While guarded, the expert comments in this article seem to offer the Ford family a mother lode of opportunity — an eldorado, a world-class gravy train of inestimable bounds — to challenge the police investigation in court.

If only such forward thinking could make one feel better.

Michael Bielecki, Toronto.

Ford has to go

As a fiscal conservative, it is with a heavy heart that I have reluctantly concluded that this train wreck of a politician must step down. Political leadership encompasses much more than just fiscal responsibility. There are some basic common sense expectations of our leaders that require proper decorum befitting the office that they hold. If any mayor does not pass the test of being a decent role model for my kids, it’s time for him to head for the exit. Sadly, that time has arrived for Rob Ford. Goodbye and good riddance.

Dan Mailer, London, Ont.

Letter-writer Arthur Rubinoff misses the most salient point of the Bill Clinton lying episode (“I did not have sex with that woman”) relative to the Rob Ford lie (“I am not an alcoholic or a drug addict”). Bill Clinton survived an impeachment process and went on to serve out his last term and left office with the highest end-of-office approval rating of any U.S. president since the Second World War.

Mel Fogel, Toronto.

I am very happy for letter-writer David Burn that his telephone call to the mayor’s office succeeded in getting his household garbage picked up. Instead of wasting time calling elected politicians, a quick call to 311 would have put him in touch with a public servant who would have dealt with his concern right away (I speak from personal experience). As to what harm the mayor’s decisions may have done to the Burn family, take a look at our neglected public transit system, our crumbling road system or the estimated $1,000 per year cost in virtual perpetuity to every city household for the ridiculous subway line to Scarborough? To allege that Rob Ford “actually does something for the city” on the basis of his getting one household’s garbage picked up is a bit of a stretch. Let us not forget that Mussolini’s popularity was largely based on the fact that he made the trains run on time — we all know how that turned out.

Jack Gibson, West Hill, Ont.

When Rob Ford was elected, many of us saw a breath of fresh air in politics. Here came a guy with an agenda to put taxpayers first. A political white knight who would stop the socialistic platform of the Millerites and stop catering to union demands. A man that would lead a path to conservative values and that would stop the gravy train.

But now, his behaviour is an embarrassment. Our hopes, faith, and expectations are now gone. I haven’t felt so down over the behaviour of a person since Ben Johnson’s cheating turned cheers into jeers.

Ron West, Welland, Ont.

Q. Why is municipal politics so bitter? A. Because the stakes are so small. (This quip was originally used of church politics, but the church no longer has any stakes, and the quip is public domain.)

Karen Linnett, Toronto.

The good thing about the unfolding Ford fiesta in Toronto is that now we will never get the Olympic Games. Thank you, God!

Allen Strike, Port Hope, Ont.

When I was a young lad during the 1940s, a favourite caricature in the Toronto newspapers often showed Toronto politicians with a pig’s nose. That’s when Toronto was called “Hogtown.” What goes around comes around.

Richard O’Mara, Port Dover, Ont.

Different views on ‘medicine’

Why are Ontario MDs fighting the rise of naturopaths? It’s about control. A patient who goes to a naturopath becomes more proactive and wants to be better informed about their medical treatments. The argument that naturopaths lack expertise is nonsense. I have been treated by naturopaths for over 26 years and they has an excellent knowledge of medical treatments. Many of the supplements my naturopath recommended many years ago, like fish oil and probiotics, are now being widely recommended.

Doctors do not have a cure for everything. People deserve the right to choose the health care that serves them best.

Letter-writer Dr. Marvin Levant sees “medicine” in black and white terms — either it’s there, or it isn’t. However, traditional/allopathic/modern-day “medicine” can be found wanting (through the patient’s and MD’s eyes) we cannot and never will cure them all. Patients may then resort to: alternative/non-traditional/complementary medical care. Most of the time, only a transfer of money (patient to the practitioner) results.

What usually drives the patient towards alternative care is … desperation. With desperation can come stupidity, with $ concerns seldom entering decision-making. My advice: don’t blame the patients, the alternative or traditional practitioners. Keep maintaining a medical conversation with the “sick” patient, plus an open mind to all avenues of treatment possibilities.

Dr. David Saul, Toronto.

Atlantic crossings

Letter-writer Sandra McAuslan states: “I take issue with Mylène Paquette who says that she is the first North American to complete a solo journey across the treacherous North Atlantic. She is not.” What Ms. Paquette actually said is that she had become the first North American woman to row solo across the Atlantic. A very different story and one made in Canada.

While Robert Manry made it across the Atlantic solo in the smallest boat ever, Tinkerbell, he did do so as a sailor, not a female rower. The honour for the first solo crossing is claimed by Alain Bombard of France, who, in 1952, drifted in a Zodiac from the Canaries to Barbados, without provisions!

Nicholas Brooks, Toronto.

‘A regrettable trend in medicine’

The dispute over the treatment of multiple sclerosis, which has now reached the court, is a sign of a regrettable trend in medicine. Legitimate scientific disagreement ought to be resolved privately among colleagues by reasoned discussion. The treatment of MS by attacking the jugular veins never made sense, as the jugular veins drain only the cerebral hemispheres, as any neurologist knows, and not the spinal cord.

While the legal dispute will be resolved in court, putting the medical dispute into the public sphere has led to strong language and ill feeling which contributes nothing to any patient, to say nothing of foolish political intervention in a Western province. I suspect many of my colleagues dealing with this serious disease will understand the frustration felt by the neurologist in this case.

Paul Bratty, (retired neurologist), Gibsons, B.C.

The CFL rules

What a splendid article by on the Canadian Football League. I have been a loyal and unabashed fan for 45 years and I know that our brand of football is far superior. I remember attending an exhibition game between the Ottawa Rough Riders and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in 1959 when I was six. My beloved grandfather who introduced me to the game pointed out a ball player on the sidelines who was throwing the ball to a teammate, number 82. My grandfather leaned over to me and said: “See that guy; he is going to be a good one.” That player was Russ Jackson, who became one of the greatest quarterbacks in football history north or south of the border.

Steve Flanagan, (proud RedBlacks season ticket holder), Ottawa.

John Tory still not the man for the job

John Tory’s less-than-stellar political career is now being tirelessly re-rejuvenated, a third old time. This latest scenario is based upon the surrealistic happenstance of a wounded politician who is spiralling downfall, not because of the radio talk show host’s abilities. He has arrived at this particular juncture at this most auspicious time, only because of someone else’s enigmatic misfortune. Fair and square? Mr. Tory unanimously remains Toronto’s and Ontario’s oldest political bridesmaid, and we can do better.

Victor Redlick, Toronto.

‘S–t happens’

I think Jonathan Kay ignored the base cause of the conspiracy theories around the JFK assassination. The aftermath of the shooting was badly bungled. The Warren Report is crap. Nature abhors a vacuum, therefore insert your theory here.

What the ??

I love the National Post. However, there are one or two things about the paper that annoy me, one of them being the use of sideways banners and masthead. I have often been tempted to write (sarcastically) if we could one day expect to see an upside-down headline. And lo and behold, it came to pass in Saturday’ Weekend Post.

For years, the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians has requested a health human resources strategy to determine the number and type of emergency physicians required to meet the needs of the 15 million Canadians who seek emergency care.

Canada is unique in the world for having a hybrid system of training emergency physicians; specialist trained, family physicians with an extra year of training in emergency medicine and family physicians with limited training but considerable enthusiasm and community commitment.

Limited reports have suggested that Canada currently requires approximately another 2,000 emergency physicians.

In their absence, every province has experienced difficulty in staffing ERs, particularly in rural communities, leading to unanticipated and disturbing disruptions in service. In several provinces, they have all but given up and introduced nurse practitioners to staff “collaborative emergency centres” which are emergency departments in name only.

Perhaps because of the complexity associated with the hybrid nature of what constitutes an emergency physician and the vast diversity in practice locales, both provincial and federal governments have failed to address this pressing need.

Without leadership, forward thinking and strategic planning, Canada’s emergency rooms will indeed continue to experience an absolute shortage of trained emergency physicians, the consequences of which seem all too obvious.

Morris L. Barer is chanting his mantra of “too many doctors” once again. He sang this tune back in 1991 while teamed up with Greg Stoddart, leading to reductions in medical school admissions. That produced disastrously long wait lists that still exist today. When was the last time you heard a complaint that it was “too easy” to find a family doctor? Or that the wait time to see a specialist was too short? Meanwhile there is an impending tsunami of Baby Boom doctor retirements, at the same time that there is the general greying of the population with its attendant increased need for medical care. After all, about 25% of all health-care costs are devoted to caring for patients in their last year of life

Plus, newly graduated doctors work fewer hours than retiring doctors. This isn’t because these new doctors are women in the midst of having children and raising a family — new male doctors, not unsurprisingly, don’t want to work 60 hours a week either.

The problem is the right mix of doctors, not the number. Right now, there is a dire shortage of dermatologists in BC. In a few years, maybe there will be a shortage of orthopedic surgeons. What we need is a group that is charged with overseeing the whole picture of medical human resources.

But I will agree with Mr. Barer on one thing: There are too many of a certain type of doctor. There are too many “doctors” of economics, shouting like Chicken Little that there are “too many doctors” when they really need to look more closely at the mix and productivity, not the absolute number. If he keeps making the same prediction, Mr. Barer may eventually be right.

Alberta oil vs. bloodied oil

I live just a kilometre south of line 9. It does not concern me in the least about changing the direction of the oil flow. The whole uproar is ridiculous. But obviously it concerns somebody. There is big money hoping the Line 9 protesters successfully stop the project. Oil East will replace imported oil. It one needs a mission, does not some of this imported oil support worldwide terrorism? Maybe it is Alberta oil vs. bloodied oil.

David Marven, Oshawa, Ont.

Anti-Semitism in the National Post?

After dismissing official Israeli statement that denied that the Jewish state was ready to use nuclear weapons in 1973, letter-writer Erol Araf concludes by writing: “As always, we should be weary of those who buy official lines lox stock and bagel.” That phrase was also chosen by your editor as the headline for the letter.

I actually do not contest the statement’s content, but this choice of words demonstrates its writer’s bigotry. The expression “lock stock and barrel” would have sufficed. But because he is writing about Israel (and, by his line of thinking, of Jews), his paraphrase demonstrates that Mr. Araf harbours more than just resentment of official lines, but good old subtly displayed anti-Jewish feelings and thoughts.

That the National Post published it, and used it as a headline, shows either ignorance or silent complicity. In fact, very few Israeli indulge in smoked salmon or bagels — it is a North American Jewish favourite, but rare and costly in Israel. And right there, in this little inaccuracy, both Mr. Araf and your paper display your prejudice.

Yehonatan Berick, Ottawa.

Arol Araf responds: I am afraid Mr. Berick missed the point of “lox stock and bagel.” I am Jewish and have devoted all my working life to serving Jewish and Israeli causes and institutions from Israel aircraft industries to Mount Sinai for over 40 years. As my boss at the Canadian Jewish Congress Professor Irvin Cotler once observed: “if everything is anti-Semitic, nothing is anti-Semitic.” Lighten up, Yehonatan, life is too short!

A great day for Canada

Eighty-two-year-old Alice Munro is only the 13th woman and the first Canadian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. As Peter Englund, the academy’s permanent secretary noted, “She’s very good at capturing different modes in people and is a fantastic portrayer of human beings.”

The prize committee compared Ms. Munro to Anton Chekhov, considered to be one of the greatest short story writers in history. According to Michael Dirda, who won a 1993 Pulitzer Prize for literary criticism,” Ms. Munro is one of the greatest short story writer alive”.

Waris Shere, Winnipeg.

Keep your kids home on Halloween

The term “Halloween” comes from the phrase “all hallows eve” — the eve of all saints. This pagan celebration began with the Celts, who believed that after death, the soul migrates to another body. On the night of Oct. 31, it comes back to its original body to demand something to eat from relatives or neighbours. After the Celtic people converted to Christianity, some continued celebrating death on Oct. 31. Irish immigrants brought the custom to the U.S. where they added the belief in witches, goblins, vampires and monsters.

Halloween, as such, takes the meaning away from the Catholic feast of “All Saints”, it ridicules death and celebrates it with no view of the Resurrection. It has become a consumeristic celebration that at times gets out of control. Some kids go “trick or treating” threatening to damage homes or property if they don’t get candy. And the message kids are left with is that in order to have fun one has to dress up in costumes related to evil or occultism.

Paul Kokoski, Hamilton, Ont.

Another Quebec Charter consideration

Should the Charter of Values become law, it will soon become evident that it will be difficult to retain the image of Quebec as a purely secular state when it is realized that more than two of three place names in the province start with either St. or Ste.

Russel Williams, Georgeville, Que.

Throw out the mandatory census

To dismiss charges against 89-year-old Audrey Tobias because she was elderly, a veteran of World War Two and a “public relations nightmare” is an interesting argument, but hardly legal grounds for a dismissal.

If the courts are going to use excuses such as these to dismiss charges against people for refusing to complete the census, then the government needs to take the next logical step and make the completion of any government census completely voluntary. That way, we won’t have to prosecute elderly peace activists and the courts won’t have to come up with BS excuses as to why the prosecution should not have proceeded.

Curt Shalapata, Oshawa, Ont.

Flack vs. flak

Re: Victory For A Census Objector, editorial, Oct. 10.

This editorial starts with the sentence: “In the summer of 2010, the federal Conservatives took a lot of flack for doing away with the mandatory long-form census.” My definition of “a lot of flack” is the plus-sized public relations guy in the seat next to me in economy. “Flak” is what enemy anti-aircraft gunners in Europe created in the sky to dissuade Allied bombers from dropping their cargo onto their heads during World War Two.

Charles McGregor, Oshawa, Ont.

Sounds familiar

Andrew Coyne is punditry’s answer to the Great Houdini. Without even once mentioning proportional representation (PR), the inference is clear that Canada and the United States’ “radically dysfunctional” systems can achieve overnight salvation with its simple implementation. Never mind the political history of countries such as Italy, where PR has led to numerous ineffective governments.

John Boehmer, Gatineau, Que.

Andrew Coyne uses his latest column on the stalemate in American politics as a pretext, once again, to push his idea of turning our first-past-the-post system into one of proportional representation. Perhaps letters editor Paul Russell could use the popular weekly question on the Letters page as a possible solution. I suggest something along the lines of: “Should a featured columnist continue to push a particular view in his/her writing, even though the idea has no traction with the majority of Canadians.” The media is, of course, all about free speech, however there is free speech and then there is repetitive free speech.

Jeff Spooner, Kinburn, Ont.

Why taxing corporations doesn’t work

Really, are the issue of corporate taxes anything more than a regressive boondoggle created by vote hungry politicians. Companies first pay taxable wages to employees, and second pay taxable dividends to shareholders. After wages, but before dividends, they also pay a lot of HST. If they still have excess capital from profits, they can expand (which will generate more taxable jobs and dividends) or deposit the excess funds that the deposit institution can then use to provide loans to other businesses to expand or to consumers to spend, both of which create more jobs and taxes. Aren’t any corporates taxes just a transfer from more effective capital allocation of the private sector to the black hole of inefficient government spending.

F. Purvis, Toronto.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/todays-letters-two-mds-offer-prescriptions-to-cure-the-doctor-shortage/feed0stddoctor.pngPostmedia columnist Andrew Coyne to be honoured by civil liberties group for promoting democracyhttp://news.nationalpost.com/editors/postmedia-columnist-andrew-coyne-to-be-honoured-by-civil-liberties-group-for-promoting-democracy
http://news.nationalpost.com/editors/postmedia-columnist-andrew-coyne-to-be-honoured-by-civil-liberties-group-for-promoting-democracy#commentsMon, 27 May 2013 22:17:13 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=314367

Postmedia News political columnist Andrew Coyne will be honoured by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association for the role his work has played in promoting and strengthening democracy.

Mr. Coyne is among 19 Canadians to be recognized for “their passionate, fearless and unwavering commitment to human rights and human dignity,” the association said Monday. Other recipients include filmmaker David Cronenberg, singer-songwriter Nelly Furtado, CBC foreign correspondent Nahlah Ayed, former governor-general Adrienne Clarkson and former Supreme Court justice Ian Binnie.

“There is no higher calling for a journalist than helping to safeguard our democracy. We are pleased the Civil Liberties Association recognizes Mr. Coyne’s excellence,” said Postmedia News editor-in-chief Lou Clancy.

This is the third year for the CCLA awards, which will be presented on Wednesday in Toronto. Honorees come from four categories: excellence in the arts; public engagement; advocacy; and business. A special recognition award is also presented and this year goes to Cliff Pilkey, former president of the Ontario Federation of Labour and a former NDP member of the Ontario legislature.

Mr. Coyne is recognized in the public engagement category not for a particular column but for his overall body of work, said CCLA spokeswoman Sukanya Pillay, adding journalists’ reports and commentary are recognized “if we feel it has made an impact upon our social fabric.”

Mr. Coyne, who writes a three-times-weekly column for Postmedia newspapers, including the National Post, and websites, has held senior writing positions at Maclean’s, the Globe and Mail and the Southam newspaper chain. He is also a panellist with the At Issue panel on CBC’s The National. His incisive columns have covered topics ranging from the robocalls election affair, to Senate spending, the abortion debate, the “root causes” of terrorism, and how political parties have come to exist without principles.

It has been clear for some time that to the extent Stephen Harper winds up changing Canada, it will be through the cumulative effect of many decisions that are not in themselves earth-shattering (much as the opposition will howl at them). But this very incremental approach to remodelling Canada doesn’t explain the wholesale abandonment of high-profile “consensual goals” (as columnist Chantal Hébert recently called them) that Mr. Harper had when he took office. Strengthening Parliament, downshifting on cronyism, emphasizing accountability above all — those ideas didn’t come out of some pre-election focus group. Those were core beliefs.

“You didn’t just sell out. You bought in,” my colleague Andrew Coyne alleged at last year’s Manning Centre Networking Conference. They sold out on spending, on stimulus, on flatter taxation, corporate welfare, “privatization, deregulation [and] reform of public services” he charged. But on these matters, Conservatives can at least plausibly claim that it was too hard. Their hands were tied, either by public opinion or minority governance. On openness and accountability — remember that? — they cannot. They just changed their minds. They didn’t have to.

Then there are issues that fall between — Conservative preferences that might not be impossible to sell but that nevertheless require an ounce of courage and a coherent argument (or a majority government). One is supply management in the dairy industry, which could hardly be more offensive on principle to conservatives, but which shouldn’t be supported by almost anyone.

In support of supply management you have dairy farmers, locavores, food purity paranoiacs and people who support protectionism on principle, even if it drives up the cost of food staples and thereby constitutes a regressive tax on the poor for the benefit of wealthy businesspeople. It should be utterly poisonous policy for all parties; and it probably would be utterly poisonous policy for any party that proposed a similar system for a sector that didn’t already enjoy such ironclad protectionism. Try doubling the cost of bread, see how that goes over.

But on the other side you have some apparently fearsome lobbyists — think the NRA with a milk moustache — who will pump voters full of horror stories about the evil American (hormones!) and God forbid Chinese (melamine!) dairy industries, and food security and buying local and the death of the family farm. A party seeking to eliminate supply management would have to fight that rhetoric and political leaders who latched on to it.

Last week, though, the supply management fortress endured a small but telling breach. Henceforth, commercial producers of fresh pizza, and only commercial producers of fresh pizza, will be allowed to buy pizza-appropriate mozzarella under a new classification priced somewhere closer to the true market rate. (My colleague Terence Corcoran suggests it won’t be much cheaper at all, but it’s the principle that matters.) Commercial producers of frozen pizza already had this exemption, because … well, there’s nothing I could write here that would make any sense, so forget it.

If Mr. Harper announced his intention to end supply management tomorrow, the opposition would cry bloody murder — and vice versa

This is the dairy farmers crying uncle. The insane price of cheese had prompted pizza-makers to resort to desperate measures to keep their products competitive: importing mozzarella-and-pepperoni “kits” from the United States through a regulatory loophole (it was still cheaper even if they threw away the pepperoni); and in some cases buying smuggled cheese.

That’s right. After seven years of Conservative governance, we have a Prime Minister who vows to protect a system that actually creates an incentive to smuggle cheese across the Canada-U.S. frontier.

But here’s the weird thing: The Canadian Dairy Commission announced this salacious mozzarella reclassification on May 1. Since then, as far as I can see, not a single opposition politician or left-wing special-interest group has made a peep about it. For that matter, the issue of hormone-enriched American cheese flooding the Canadian market, either illegally or through the pepperoni loophole, doesn’t seem to have been an issue either. The word “pepperoni” hasn’t been uttered in a parliamentary context for nearly three years.

If Mr. Harper announced his intention to end supply management tomorrow, the opposition would cry bloody murder — and vice versa. But here’s Big Pizza being handed an exemption from the rules because the system doesn’t work for them, and everyone’s copacetic?

Of course they are — because to complain would be to highlight the dead-obvious populist case against supply management. Pizza Pizza’s current market cap is $256-million. Domino’s Pizza’s is more than $3-billion. Pizza Hut owner YUM! Brands’ is more than $30-billion. These guys get a nice break on their mozzarella prices, while Mr. and Mrs. Jones of Elm Street get stiffed — both at the supermarket and, populists would argue, when their pizza deliveries stay the same price?

Forget the dairy lobby. That’s political poison. Canadian politicians should be scrambling to be first to promise to eliminate supply management. As someone who is ideologically opposed to protectionism and by no means above populism, Mr. Harper could hardly be better suited to have a go. If he leaves office without having laid a glove on it, he won’t have any excuse whatsoever.

My colleague Andrew Coyne recently renewed his call for political advertising reform — specifically an end to anything even remotely resembling a public subsidy for it, which I could not possibly support more; and a requirement that party leaders voice their own ads, which somewhat offends my free-speech Spidey senses. But as the Conservatives prepare to roll out some Justin Trudeau attack-mailers, at taxpayer expense, featuring an outrageously misleading quotation, I keep coming back to a perplexing question: We wouldn’t stand for the level of dishonesty and deception we routinely see in political advertising if it came from someone selling pickup trucks, hamburgers, underwear or shampoo. So why the hell do we put up with it from people trying to sell us the people who will run the country?

I have heard the justifications for the exemption of political advertising from Advertising Standards Canada standards any number of times, and at no time have they ever made much sense to me.

It’s impossible to evaluate the truthiness of an ad during an election campaign. So? Do it afterwards and report back. Political advertising isn’t just a campaign phenomenon anymore anyway. Not hardly.

Voters understand and discount hyperbole. That doesn’t seem to be what the parties think, or else they wouldn’t constantly rub hyperbole in our faces.

We need unfettered dialogue and debate in politics. Amen, assuming equal right of rebuttal. But then why not afford people selling vastly less important products the same leeway? I’m reminded of an amusing scenario that Allan Gregg recently imagined: Burger King accusing McDonald’s of using beef rife with botulism, and McDonald’s firing back by claiming that Burger King’s product is swimming in E. coli. And just wait until Wendy’s gets in on the act! Why should politicians be afforded this absurd slanderous luxury if burger joints aren’t?

I certainly don’t want some third party poring over every single advertisement in search of exaggeration, hyperbole or torque. Libel laws are there to be used, should parties choose. But if we are, as it seems, a country that values truth in advertising, then I struggle to see why we should shrug at an ad that presents, for example, Justin Trudeau’s interpretation of his father’s views on Quebecers as if it were his own opinion, but recoil at a similar sleight of hand if it was used to sell, say, processed cheese.

I absolutely agree with Coyne: At a minimum, no more public money for this garbage. Not another dime. No subsidies, no tax breaks for donations, no nothing. Canadian voters subsidizing our political parties as they currently operate is roughly the equivalent of a city’s public works department subsidizing graffiti artists. But much as it annoys me, much as I wish it were otherwise, Canada is a country that loves regulating speech. Why are we letting politicians off the hook?

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/why-do-we-let-politicians-lie-on-television/feed0stdTrudeauToday's letters: 'There will never be a country called Quebec'http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/ed0413-letters
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/ed0413-letters#commentsSat, 13 Apr 2013 05:00:13 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=112893

Letter-writer Jackson Doughart doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The “Silent Majority of” Quebecers are true blue Canadians like myself. Canadians, generally, are not “risk takers” and Quebecers are no different. The foolishness you are hearing daily is the “Noisy Minority.” There will never be a country called Quebec.

Still, Quebecers are proud of themselves, their history, their accomplishments and their society, just as Canadians in any other province. Don’t be put off by those few, very vocal, radicals who love to dumbfound you with their absurd daily utterances designed to make headlines. They are playing to a small, hard-core audience. We’ve had them before and we will probably have them again.

And yes, Quebecers are not really interested in Justin Trudeau. Maybe we just don’t think Canada should have its own monarchy — or maybe we, like many Canadians, have had enough of the Liberals and think we should stick with Stephen Harper’s Conservatives for at least another six years.

Andrew Coyne gives us a potted summary of Adam Smith’s economic philosophy but makes a fatal mistake in applying it to the Canadian experience with outsourcing and foreign workers.

Smith’s magnum opus, The Wealth of Nations, referred to an economy within the container of the nation-state. The “invisible hand” Smith referred to was specifically related to “the support of domestic industry.”

Mr. Coyne has expanded the reach of Smith’s argument to the entire world. What he doesn’t say is that for this to work, wages and consumption must first be equalized. Either Canadian wages have to be lowered to those of Pakistan, or Pakistan’s have to be raised to those of Canada.

Canadians are, naturally, outraged at this callous dereliction of national responsibility, but Mr. Coyne is oblivious to the pain inflicted. He asks: “Don’t foreign workers have rights too?” The answer is an emphatic “no,” at least not in Canada.

This argument would be a lot clearer to Mr. Coyne if the National Post were to replace him as a commentator with someone from Bangalore or Bophut.

I was astonished that an otherwise astute columnist such as Robert Fulford should be so taken by Mies Van der Rohe’s Seagram and reader Mark Cole’s assertion that Toronto is fortunate to have an “edifice” such as the T-D centre, also designed by Mies Van der Rohe, ” in the midst of what is otherwise often lacklustre architecture.”

Mies Van der Rohe peaked early with the German pavilion at the Barcelona Exposition of 1929 and the iconic Barcelona chairs.

In 1949 he designed the 860-880 Lakeshore Drive apartments, a development on Chicago’s waterfront that became prototypical for the many towers subsequently designed by himself and his many acolytes including the Seagram Building and the T-D centre. They are neatly detailed conventional structures: Their ubiquity making the more commonplace than outstanding.

The T-D Centre, alas, does not stand in stark contrast to Toronto’s “otherwise often lacklustre architecture.” In fact, it fits right in.

Frank Glazier, Toronto.

There is a critical difference between the Mies van der Rohe-designed Seagram building in New York City and his T-D Centre, in Toronto.

The former has a spacious plaza that allows the Seagram building to “stand out” from the crowd. As Robert Fulford noted, the plaza is “exquisitely organized” and embellished with sculptures that attract visitors.

The nearest comparison, in Toronto, was the delicate white box of the Bata Shoe headquarters balanced on its pedestal above a curve of the Don Valley Parkway (now torn down).

Letter-writer Gary Waller is bending the truth somewhat when he states, correctly, that Queen Elizabeth joined the British Army auxiliaries at the earliest opportunity whereas Margaret Thatcher did not. But he is incorrect to call Mrs. Thatcher a “draft-dodger.”

The Queen joined the auxiliaries in 1945 at the age of 19. Margaret Thatcher was 12 years old in 1945 — the year that conscription for women ended. We can knock Maggie, but draft dodging was not one of her sins.

Geoffrey Richards, Victoria.

To suggest that the then-Princess Elizabeth was a “warrior” is a stretch. She put on a uniform, learned how to change a spark plug and every night, she went home to Windsor Castle. Margaret Thatcher was a warrior against the Marxist/socialist dogma that has destroyed much of Europe. She made some mistakes , however nothing draconian.

Stephen Harper is right when he said that bullying is not the right term for what was done to Rehtaeh Parsons. There is a better term: identity rape.

Identity rape is a hate crime committed by a group against an individual. The Internet makes it possible for these criminals to identify a victim to each other, to coalesce as a group and to jointly swarm their target. The rape target is constantly attacked in subtle ways — muttered words, hateful looks, prank calls, Internet messaging — many times a day from many different directions. The victim’s identity is completely destroyed and in its place is erected an object of fiction, a two-dimensional caricature created by the rape swarm for its own amusement.

Finally, as with Rehtaeh Parsons and others like Amanda Todd, the victim is literally hounded to death.

Chris Selley calls for MPs to “grow a spine” but let’s be honest — these people are caught between a rock and hard place of torn loyalties and split allegiances. Our idiotic electoral system not so subtly directs us to vote for parties, not individual candidates. More often than not, the “winners” don’t have the support of even 50% of the folks in their ridings.

What is needed is for voters to be empowered — and to empower, in turn, our individual MPs — by adopting a voting system that is true, fair and effective. Every single MP must enter Parliament with sufficient electoral support and every constituency should have an MP that truly speaks for them in parliament.

Spines will come with this system

Mark Henschel, Toronto.

No such thing as a quiet jet

Re: A Better airport to serve us all, editorial, April 12.

I laughed at the Post’s description of Porter Airlines’ proposed jets at Toronto’s Billy Bishop Island Airport as “quieter.”

Calling a jet “quiet” is truly an oxymoron. Once the runway is extended, the Island Airport becomes open season for all commercial jets. The other airlines are already saying they want in. If the city has the money to extend the runway, why not build a world class subway for millions of people instead of destroying the waterfront to profit a few? And I write this letter early Friday morning, after being awakened by the first “quiet” Porter plane over my home in the Toronto Beach neighbourhood.

Cognitive dissonance is a term from psychology describing the state of mind of a person who holds two contradictory beliefs at the same time. The conflict between the reality conveyed by the senses and prior belief commonly gives rise to feelings of immense anxiety and frustration, which the patient attempts to resolve in various ways.

Then there is the Canadian conservative movement, which seems capable of convincing itself of any number of conflicting ideas without visible discomfort of any kind. Nowhere is this particular case of cognitive dissonance on better display than at the annual Manning Networking Conference, where the movement’s core gathers every year to congratulate itself on two things: the rightness of its beliefs, and the greatness of the government of Stephen Harper.

It seems to me a healthy psyche requires one to choose between the two (or indeed neither). But to spend the better part of a weekend reiterating your profound faith in the policies of conservatism, all the while roaring your approval for the government that has repudiated them at every turn, would seem evidence of some sort of pathology.

Oh, there was the odd sign of unease. At a question-and-answer session with Jason Kenney and Maxime Bernier, a woman went to the microphone to ask the two ministers why their government, with the national debt now in excess of $600-billion, was still spending more than any government in our history. (Which is true. Program spending had only once exceeded $6,500 per capita, in constant 2012 dollars, in all the years before the Conservatives came to power. It has averaged nearly $6,900 over the last seven years.) The ministers gave non-committal answers, though Bernier restated his heretical belief that spending should be frozen at current levels.

But soon she was replaced at the microphone by a young man who wondered how to “break through” to those on the left who persisted in the belief that massive deficits were the appropriate response to an economic slump. The ministers nodded sympathetically. Yes, they averred, that was a problem.

Conservatism has traditionally revelled in its contradictions. Consistency was the preserve of intellectuals, for whom conservatives maintained a healthy suspicion. But while the movement remains as ideologically incoherent as ever — it was Harper himself who once said conservatives in Canada believed both that the Charter of Rights should be abolished and that it should be amended to include a property rights clause — its most significant rift today is not so much between this or that element of the conservative coalition as between the movement and the party, or perhaps reality.

I was struck by a passage in Preston Manning’s keynote speech to the conference that bears his name. (Harper may be the leader of the Conservative party, but it is Manning who, more than anyone, is the leader of the conservative movement.) He was emphasizing, against the odds, the commonality between the disparate strands of modern conservatism. He listed them off: libertarians, “for whom freedom from constraint is the most important dimension,” fiscal conservatives, “for whom budget balancing and living within our means financially is most important,” all the way through progressive conservatives, green conservatives, social conservatives, democratic conservatives, and constitutional conservatives, “for whom subsidiarity and decentralization of power is the most important.”

Well, he forgot one: “snowmobiling conservatives,” the ones who presumably frequent the snowmobile clubs the government keeps showering with public funds. Or perhaps “ribbon-cutting conservatives,” for whom pictures of Conservative MPs handing out grants to constituents is the most important. And what about “supply management conservatives,” whose core value is paying too much for food?

Well, no. But it is significant that he neglected to mention “free market conservatives.” Once upon a time these were considered central to the definition of conservatism. Perhaps this was Manning’s concession to reality, for whatever else the Harper government may pretend to believe in, it does not even pretend any more to believe in the free market. The addition of $150-billion to the national debt might have been put down to the exigencies of politics, but the announcements of recent weeks — hundreds of millions of dollars for the auto industry, hundreds of millions more for the venture-capital sector (“venture” apparently has acquired a different meaning lately), billions in loan guarantees to a Newfoundland hydro project, plus that wholesale plunge into 1970s-style industrial policy via defence procurement — all too clearly reflect this government’s most sincere convictions.

But go back over that list: all those varieties of conservatism, and there isn’t a single one of them that can find itself reflected in the policies of this Conservative government. Libertarians? How exactly has this government lightened the load of bureaucratic impositions on personal liberty — and if you say the long-form census, let me remind you that this was unveiled on the same day as the government announced it was extending the universal, mandatory boat licencing regime.

Fiscal conservatives I’ve already discussed. Social conservatives? Pretty much their only demand — more of a request, really — is for some sort of restriction, however mild, on the availability of abortion, in the only country in the democratic world that has none. For their troubles, they have been rewarded with a ban on even discussing it.

I’ve never been quite clear on what progressive conservatives believe, but whatever it is, it’s not Harperism. And while I agree that free-market environmentalism ought to be part of any modern conservative coalition, it is difficult to find it in a government that boasts of taking the most top-down, regulatory-heavy approach possible to climate change — precisely because it does not take it seriously. Democratic conservatives? Don’t make me laugh. Even decentralization, the obsession of constitutional conservatives, has been fitful at best.

And yet the base remains, on the whole, quiescent. One has to wonder how long this can last.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/andrew-coyne-manning-conference-makes-one-wonder-how-long-conservative-movement-can-keep-from-tearing-itself-apart/feed0stdPreston Manning, former leader of the Reform Party, at the Manning Conference in Ottawa on Friday, March 8, 2013.Jonathan Kay: David Suzuki is poster boy for why Canada needs Sun's brand of journalismhttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/jonathan-kay-david-suzuki-is-poster-boy-for-why-canada-needs-suns-hater-brand-of-journalism
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/jonathan-kay-david-suzuki-is-poster-boy-for-why-canada-needs-suns-hater-brand-of-journalism#commentsTue, 29 Jan 2013 19:13:42 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=104937

Mark van Manen/Postmedia NewsPart of the Northern Thunderbird Air Beech King Air after the crash

Unlike Andrew Coyne and Pierre Karl Péladeau, I am no expert on CRTC television policy. I couldn’t tell you the difference between a “must-carry” Class A license, a Class B carry-at-will, and a class X concealed-carry. But I do know a little about what makes for good journalism. And on that basis, I’d hate to see Sun News get taken off the air for want of revenue.

Sun’s enemies accuse the network’s hosts of being a bunch of haters. And it’s hard to deny the charge. Among the people they hate: Occupy protesters, fake hunger strikers and sanctimonious left-wing activists.

And Omar Khadr. Wow, do they hate Omar Khadr.

We know this because Sun News TV segments tend to go light on actual news, and heavy on middle-aged white guys shouting about people they don’t like. Sometimes, they sit around their Toronto studio interviewing each other. It’s a sort of performance art that might well be dubbed — by the surprisingly large number of left-wing Toronto hipsters who watch the channel ironically — as Confirmation-Bias Theatre Of The Absurd.

So, yes, they’re haters. But here’s the weird thing about hate: It often is the genesis of good journalism.

The folks at the Toronto Star who hate Harper, and hate the police state (as they see it), are the ones who broke numerous aspects of the G20 Summit story. Someone who hated Theresa Spence leaked the Attawapiskat audit. Julian Assange hates the U.S. government. When you don’t like someone, and you think they’re hiding something evil or creepy, it tends to motivate one’s truth-finding enterprises.

Which brings us to David Suzuki, another left-wing icon whom Sun News loves to hate. Few in this country would dare say a negative word about Suzuki, who has repeatedly been voted the most-trusted Canadian in Readers Digest magazine-sponsored polls. But Sun, and Ezra Levant in particular, have been going after Suzuki for a while now, and Suzuki himself admitted that Sun’s focus on his politicized activities was one of the reasons he felt obliged to step down from the board of the David Suzuki Foundation.

This week, Sun scored another win: Through access-to-information requests, the network discovered emails that reveal the odd requests that Suzuki apparently made in regard to a 2012 visit to John Abbott College in Montreal — which apparently cost the college more than $40,000, including Suzuki’s own $30,000 fee. In the correspondence, one of the university officials reports to her colleagues as follows:

We have learned, via Dr. Suzuki’s assistant, that although the Dr. does not like to have bodyguards per se, he does not mind having a couple of ladies (females) that would act as body guards in order that he may travel from one venue to another without being accosted too many times along the way. Why females you ask? Well, he is a male. No seriously, I believe it is his way of being discrete and less intimidating.

There is also chatter about how these “ladies” should be dressed, and then this:

In terms of acknowledging their contribution after the tours are completed, we will need to gather [the ladies] together at the end to either give them some brief time with Suzuki (which I will try to make happen, either by having him step out of the penthouse or enabling them to join the group in the sanctified air).

To be clear, this is not Bill-Clinton-in-Arkansas stuff. But it certainly is at variance with the usual image of Suzuki as a sort of eternally selfless Elder Spirit and a real-life Lorax. [January 30 update: John Abbott has released a statement, indicating: “To set the record straight regarding Dr. David Suzuki’s visit to our campus October 24, both male and female students escorted him throughout a full day and evening of activities in order to facilitate his movements throughout our campus. Those students, all of whom were chosen for their professionalism, were part of our Police Technology program. There was no rider in Dr. Suzuki’s contract specifying the gender or dress code of those assisting him throughout the day. The negative comments and innuendos made are demeaning to those students and to the College and are the result of the misinterpretation of emails exchanged between colleagues.”]

The story doesn’t surprise me that much. I have had some dealings with the people who surround David Suzuki, and have found their treatment of him somewhat cultish, with each of his pronouncements being treated like pearls of wisdom from a Chinese emperor. When you have so many people drinking your Kool-Aid, it’s only a matter of time before you develop a sense of entitlement to match.

Sun News Network/ScreengrabFour of those among the small group of men who, against all odds, pushed their way into the flaming fuselage of Northern Thunderbird Air Flight 204 to drag injured passengers to safety after the small aircraft crashed Thursday in Richmond.

Nevertheless, I’m not sure I would have pursued this story — even if I’d been the one who got the initial tip from John Abbott. Partially, it’s because I just don’t dislike Suzuki enough, let alone hate him. In fact, I probably have drunk a little of the Kool-Aid myself over the years; and so I am handicapped by the vague sense that it would somehow be wrong or impolite to make this great Canadian icon look bad.

Why, some day, if I become famous enough, I might even aspire to share a table with him at some awards banquet or other. Wouldn’t want to say anything that renders such a meeting awkward.

The great virtue of Sun — and yes, it’s a virtue — is that the people who work there don’t seem to be hobbled by such constraints. They’re the ones who tell us that Theresa Spence is still fat, and that modern dance is for ninnies — and they don’t apologize for it, because they know that most people think these things, even if they don’t say them.

Moreover, there’s no tuxedo in the host’s trunk, lest he be invited at the last minute to one of Toronto’s many Distinguished Evenings in Commemoration of Excellence. And so there’s nothing to impede the hate instinct that provides lots and lots of empty blather and nonsense on Sun News broadcasts, but also, every once in awhile, a real story that few other journalists in this country will touch.

National Post
jkay@nationalpost.com
@jonkay

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/jonathan-kay-david-suzuki-is-poster-boy-for-why-canada-needs-suns-hater-brand-of-journalism/feed0stdWhen the Sun News Network first loomed on the national horizon two years ago, before it had even begun broadcasting, sections of the Canadian left reacted as they do to most things: with hysterics.Sun News Channel/ScreengrabSun News Network/ScreengrabArmine Yalnizyan: Sorry, Andrew Coyne, but income inequality is a real problemhttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/armine-yalnizyan-sorry-andrew-coyne-but-income-inequality-is-a-real-problem
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/armine-yalnizyan-sorry-andrew-coyne-but-income-inequality-is-a-real-problem#commentsFri, 21 Dec 2012 05:01:15 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=101709

In a Dec. 15 column, Andrew Coyne argues that income inequality is not growing in Canada — a position he says is fuelled by a recent TD Bank report. That study said income inequality grew until the early 2000s, then stopped increasing.

But Miles Corak, an economist and international authority on the links between income inequality and social mobility, effectively rebutted both Mr. Coyne’s conclusion and the TD study. Mr. Corak’s blogs (at milescorak.com) show income inequality has not stopped increasing in Canada, and offer better ways to measure it. He also points out that Canada is not immune to the many ways in which inequality threatens opportunity.

But this skips over a more important question: Why hasn’t Canada seen a reduction in income inequality?

In the decade before the global crisis, our economy was firing on all cylinders and employment rates reached record highs. From the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, 15 of 32 OECD countries reduced income inequality. Not us. Instead of harnessing our extraordinary track record of job creation and economic growth, Canada tumbled further down the inequality rankings than any other country, slumping from above-average equality to below-average. If such a buoyant market didn’t help close the gap, what will?

Related

A year ago, economist Stephen Gordon offered some insights on how to assess income inequality in Canada, noting it has grown constantly over the last 30 years, but in different ways.

From the 1970s to the ’90s, inequality grew because more people lost ground at the bottom of the income distribution in the wake of two big recessions. After the mid-’90s, on the other hand, the gap grew because the rich did so much better than everyone else, seeing the lion’s share of income gains from economic growth. So much for trickle-down economics.

The Fraser Institute mounted an income-mobility-themed defence of the economy over the past generation. Their recently published study, Measuring Income Mobility in Canada, dismissed the rich-got-richer concerns by countering that the poor got richer, too. The Fraser Institute authors emphasized that the poor have seen faster rates of growth in their incomes than the rich since the mid-’90s.

But their idiosyncratic marshalling of the facts and interpretation of the evidence was enough to pull Statistics Canada’s former assistant chief statistician, Michael Wolfson, out of retirement. He publicly laid bare the deep methodological flaws in their study, and finished his analysis by reasserting that growing income inequality remains a serious issue in Canada.

That takes us to the last argument deployed against those who are concerned about income equality: Poverty, we are told, should be of far greater concern than income inequality.

But improving the lives of the poor means providing either more opportunity or more cold, hard cash. That involves money, which is where

follow-through usually falls off, because it means some form of redistribution. And that brings us back to income inequality.

The IMF has warned that higher inequality is correlated to shorter spells of growth, and more market volatility. The Conference Board of Canada cautions that Canada’s levels of inequality mean squandered potential. Just this week, TD Bank CEO Ed Clarke acknowledged inequality in Canada has been growing for the last 30 years, raising a challenge for society that demands discussion.

Whether you want less poverty or a more robust economy, greater innovation or improved productivity, better life chances or a healthier democracy, the way forward in Canada involves reducing income inequality.

But markets alone don’t reduce income inequality, not even when the economy is chugging away at full speed. So what can we do?

First, don’t dismiss the issue. Start a conversation about how we can reduce income inequality. The ideas will flow from across the political spectrum, because this isn’t a partisan issue. It’s a problem for everyone.

Income inequality has its share of deniers. But the evidence that is accumulating around the world makes clear: Burying the issue under a false sense of progress won’t protect us from the massively disruptive consequences of a growing gap. Stay awake. Start talking.

National Post

Armine Yalnizyan is a senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a weekly panelist on the Lang and O’Leary Exchange and a business columnist on CBC Radio’s Metro Morning.

Andrew Coyne finds it strange that the media is “obsessed” with the richest one percent, whereas we should be more concerned with the bottom 10%. (The problem isn’t giving people money when they don’t work … it’s taking it away when they do, National Post, November 16.) “Surely if there is a problem that merits our concern”, he writes “it is not that we have too many rich people, but too many poor”.

Coyne is treating the “rich getting richer” as disconnected from “the poor doing poorly”. In fact, the two are, of course, directly related.

As the Conference Board of Canada (not exactly a bunch of flaming radicals) pointed out in a widely-publicized 2011study, between 1976 and 2009, only the richest fifth of Canadians increased their share of national income. All other groups saw their income shares decline. Further, most gains went to a very small group which the Conference Board calls the “super rich”. The study noted that income inequality has increased steadily in Canada over the past 20 years.

In other words, a larger slice of the pie for the few at the top has meant smaller slices for those the bottom and in the middle. Coyne may be missing this connection due to an overly-rosy view of how the poor and middle-class have been faring.

Coyne accurately notes that the percentage of people falling below Statistics Canada’s Low-Income Cutoff (LICO) has declined from 15.2 percent in 1996 to nine percent in 2010, which sounds impressive. However, he fails to note that 1996 was the lowest point of an economic downturn. In fact, looking back a few years earlier we find that the percentage of persons who fell under the LICO cut-off was 10 percent in 1989. Going from 10 percent to 9 percent over two decades looks more like spinning our wheels, than impressive progress. By that measure, it will take another 180 years to eliminate poverty.

How has the middle class fared? Coyne states that median incomes have been rising steadily. However, the same Conference Board report tells us that median after-tax income for families and unattached individuals in Canada rose from $45,800 in 1976 to just $48,300 in 2009 (in 2009 dollars) – a total increase of barely 5% over more than three decades.

Statistical quibbles aside, Coyne agrees that it is troubling that so many people remain poor in a country as rich as ours, and his support for a Guaranteed Annual Income (GAI) is laudable.

International studies show that there is actually nothing complicated about tackling poverty in rich countries. A 2005 report by the Luxembourg Income Study showed that the poverty rate is simply a reflection of how much a government chooses to devote to social spending.

Indeed, it may come as a surprise that, in terms of market income (that is before taxes and government spending), the United States had a lower than average poverty rate among rich countries. However it also had the lowest level of anti-poverty spending and therefore the highest poverty rate, after taxes and transfers.

Sweden, Germany and Belgium all had higher poverty rates than the U.S. in terms of market incomes, but much lower poverty rates after taxes and transfers. (And fiscal conservatives take note: despite these high levels of social spending, each of these countries currently has a lower ratio of public debt to GDP than the United States).

Like the U.S., Canada, had a below-average poverty rate in terms of market incomes but an above-average poverty rate after taxes and transfers.

So solutions are not complicated, and, as Coyne notes, some, such as the GAI, may even end up saving us money by eliminating duplication between programs. However a big obstacle to addressing high Canadian (and American) levels of poverty and inequality may be….. inequality.

As Nobel Laureate Joseph Stilitz argued convincingly in his recent book, The Price of Inequality, and Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks did similarly in The Trouble With Billionaires, one effect of inequality is to undermine democracy itself. The top 1% have used their political power to influence the policy agenda, which has made them more rich, which in turn gives them even more political power — and so on in a vicious circle.

Can anyone imagine our current federal government, which has cut the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15% and is now slashing spending, agreeing to an ambitious program to end poverty, however affordable it may be?

Of course obstacles are there to be overcome. And the fact that a prominent columnist such as Andrew Coyne, as well as Conservative Senator Hugh Segal, have now endorsed such a plan is a cause for some rejoicing.

National Post

Montreal Lawyer Rick Goldman lectures on poverty and inequality in the McGill School of Social Work

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/rick-goldman-were-not-as-poverty-proof-as-we-think/feed0stdAndrew Coyne: Like Europe, Canada is attempting to run a monetary union without a proper fiscal unionhttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/andrew-coyne
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/andrew-coyne#commentsTue, 30 Oct 2012 03:14:36 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=95566

By now the problems of the euro are well understood, at least on this side of the Atlantic. As hundreds of Canadian commentators have patiently lectured Europe, the basic — elementary, really — mistake was to attempt to form a monetary union without also forming a fiscal union. Members of the euro faced no real constraint on their appetite for debt, but rather could borrow as much as they liked, without regard for the consequences for the others.

The effect, as we tried to explain to the Europeans, was to allow the weakest states to borrow on the good credit rating of the strongest. The consequences of any member defaulting on its debts would be so horrible for the rest, markets reasoned, that they were bound to be bailed out. The potential for moral hazard was childishly obvious: with other states implicitly guaranteeing their debt, yet without corresponding formal limits on their borrowing capacity, member states had every incentive to … to …

Like Europe we have a single currency. And like Europe, we maintain within that common currency a number of sovereign fiscal authorities, each seeking funds from credit markets in splendid isolation from the others, and each entitled to borrow without restriction of any kind. We, too, are attempting to run a monetary union without a proper fiscal union.

Indeed, it has long been a subject of debate among economists whether Canada is an “optimal currency area.” The various regions have such disparate economic bases, it is sometimes argued, that it makes little sense for them to share the same currency: When one is expanding, the other may be contracting. Moreover, the former’s good fortune may in part be the cause of the latter’s woes, so far as it contributes to a higher exchange rate. See: “Dutch disease.”

That certainly has been part of the trouble in Europe. At a given level of the euro, German firms may be able to compete, while Greece’s cannot. When the drachma was its currency, Greece could address this problem by devaluation; as a member of the euro that option is not available to it. Ontario faces a similar dilemma.

Of course, there are differences between the two situations. In addition to the provinces, Canada also has a federal government, with full taxing and borrowing powers of its own. As regional economies wax and wane, it can redistribute funds between them, not only via explicit inter-governmental transfers like equalization, but also through its own operations, collecting more in taxes from one region, less from another, and varying spending inversely.

Canada, what is more, arguably enjoys a higher degree of labour mobility: Workers from depressed regions can more easily move to booming areas. It’s probable, too, that prices and wages are more flexible here, allowing some degree of “internal devaluation” in response to economic shocks, in place of a falling currency.

When it comes to member states’ borrowing, we’re exactly like the Europeans. Or rather, we’re worse

Still, when it comes to member states’ borrowing, we’re exactly like the Europeans. Or rather, we’re worse: There were, after all, supposed to be conditions attached to euro membership, as in the Maastricht treaty — a debt-to-GDP ratio of less than 60%, deficits no greater than 3% of GDP — even if these were widely ignored. In Canada, uniquely, there are no such rules. The system depends entirely on the provinces behaving responsibly on their own.

As, for the most part, they have. No province has had to be bailed out since the 1930s. Neither is any province likely to face that ignominy in the near future: there are no Greeces here. There are, however, troubling signs for the longer term.

The problem, as ever, is the aging population. Other things being equal, it portends relatively fewer workers, slower growth, lower revenues and escalating costs, especially for health care. As such, its impact is almost entirely confined to the provinces. The federal government, having restrained the growth in transfers to the provinces and reformed its own pension programs, is in relatively good shape, as the parliamentary budget officer has recently reaffirmed. But past a certain point, a problem for the provinces becomes a problem for the feds.

A new study for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Provincial Solvency and Federal Obligations, calculates most provinces face a better than 50% probability of default over the next 30 years, based on current trends; for some it’s a near certainty. Perhaps surprisingly, it predicts Alberta is the most likely to default in the long term, while Quebec, though it has the highest current debt load, is the least likely. The reason: Alberta’s population is projected to age the most, while Quebec is least exposed to a collapse in commodity prices.

Yet this variance in risk is not reflected in the interest rates charged on provincial bonds. That may, as the study allows, reflect investors’ confidence that the provinces will take action in time to avert a default: Again, these numbers are based on current trends, i.e. if nothing were done. Or, possibly, it may reflect a more disturbing conjecture: That the federal government would step in to bail out a failing province, if it came to that.

Would it? Should it? Can we afford to allow such expectations to take hold? Or, given the magnitude of the fiscal challenge facing the provinces in the longer term, should we not begin to think about laying down some ground rules for provincial borrowing — to complete the fiscal union our monetary union implies?